Pro-lifers protest against amnesty

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Amnesty International has announced it will advocate for a right to abortion after rape in the future. This resolution goes back to the campaign "Stop violence against women". Pro-lifers protest: The president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Rafaele Martino, said Catholics could no longer support Amnesty in the future if the organization called for a "right to abortion". Amnesty points to extraordinary plight of women and positive feedback from Catholic circles.

Already at the Council Meeting in 2005, the organization decided to "carefully strengthen sexual and reproductive rights". Since then, there has been a discussion in the state organizations about whether a right to abortion is also part of the ie. The sections in England and New Zealand have spoken out in favor of this. Amnesty's German group won't advocate for a worldwide right to abortion. but it is being discussed "whether abortion, which is illegal in many countries, should be decriminalized," Amnesty Germany said. Radio Vatican spoke with Jurg Keller, Amnesty International's media officer in Switzerland:
"This is not a contradiction, we do not advocate the legalization of abortion. But we advocate that abortion should no longer be criminalized. We are concerned that women should not be penalized even more by not receiving appropriate medical services. This has a connection with the fact that we stand up for the right to health, that is also one of the human rights. In this context, the state has the responsibility to ensure the right of these women as well."
"The Church and Amnesty International are simply starting from very different positions. We are not a church organization, we are religiously, politically and economically completely independent of such influences. We work solely on the basis of human rights, and there are simply different positions there. We ame that these women have suffered extreme human rights violations and that they will suffer additional human rights violations if, for example, they are stigmatized by their village communities in Africa because they are accused of carrying the child of the enemy. This is a perverse logic, but it works there, when women are used as a weapon of war, so to speak. We then say: In this massive emergency for the woman, she should decide for herself what she can and cannot be responsible for."
So you are concerned about the suffering women?Jurg Keller: "I think it is enormously important that the difficult situation and the suffering of these women is also seen and not simply neglected by focusing this solely on the right to life of the child. The life of the child cannot be looked at without the right of the life of the women, and I think you just have to keep this suffering in mind and be aware that these women are getting into enormous mental hardships. In this situation, we must support them and enable them to make the decision that is right for them."
But the church says its commitment to the life of the child is not a special religious position, but universal.Jurg Keller: "This is of course the position of the Church, we can't discuss it, I think, because they have a completely different basis, we are aware of that, we can't change it either. We insist on human rights and, because of this situation, we come to a different position."
The relationship between the church and amnesty has always been very good, the cooperation close. In the meantime, however, the mood has become somewhat heated.Jurg Keller: "On the one hand, I think that this sentiment is also overstated. We get very few negative and very many positive reactions, especially from Catholic circles. On the other hand, I simply think that we have to live with the fact that we have different catches in this one position. But that does not mean – at least for us – that we are no longer working for religious freedom, but we will continue to do so and we would actually expect that our other human rights work, where we have a lot of agreement and common ground also with church circles, that we will continue to be supported in it."

The liberal "Ibn-Rushd-Goethe-Mosque" in Berlin has been open for a week – and has polarized the Islamic world ever since. She had expected criticism, founder Seyran Ates tells our site, but not to the extent.

Interviewer: The liberal mosque, as it is called, is located in a building belonging to the Protestant Church of St. John in Berlin-Moabit. Liberal, as men and women can pray together, homosexuals are explicitly welcome. This has been met with criticism and even led to claims from Turkey that the mosque is a project of the Gulen movement. It was clear that criticism would come. Did you expect to be put in a corner with the Gulen movement?

Seyran Ates (lawyer, author and authoritative founder of the "Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque" in Berlin): No. I really expected all scenarios and not to be welcomed with open arms. We know this worldwide. There are many liberal movements within the Islamic world, but Turkey is extremely disturbed by them. We are confronted with lies and I am said to put the Koran on the floor and step on it. At the same time, it is loudly proclaimed every day that we have glorified Gulen there and celebrated him as a prophet. These are disgusting lies.
Interviewer: Did you expect such an extent??
Ates: The extent of it was not clear to me beforehand, that they even use something like this to wage their struggle and war against Gulen, from which we clearly distance ourselves. We are not so conservative. We are, after all, explicitly a liberal mosque and the values or the way the Gulen movement reads Islam is not, after all, what we congruently realize here. Nevertheless, as a human rights activist, I would like to say: "What is currently being done with the Gulen movement – and as much as we really have made mistakes in the past in Turkey and were partly responsible for many things – no human rights activist or human rights activist can leave without comment. Abusing us to wage their war there is actually using words I would rather not use.
Interviewer: It should be noted that your liberal mosque and the conservative Gulen movement do not go together. What are the positive feedbacks that you have received?
Ates: This is what we're supposed to be talking about. Worldwide there are positive reactions from Australia, Algeria, Canada or Denmark. I get goose bumps just saying that. I can't even list all the countries. There are so many positive things coming from Europe, too, of course. I am inundated with e-mails. I can no longer process these and have to hire someone at short notice so that we can keep up with them. The people are so enthusiastic because they say that it is a breath of fresh air, a glimmer of hope. We all have to stand up for the beautiful aspects of Islam and fight against this Islamist terror.
Interviewer: There is a liberal mosque in the building of a Christian church, you as a future female Imamin and then should also be prayed together with men. That all sounds very daring and allegedly there have even been death threats because of it. How safe do you personally feel?

Ates: I feel so safe because I live in this wonderful country where you are protected for your freedom of speech. I am protected and our community is protected. If we can still do this even under protection, then that is unfortunately God's way. We will have to accept that then. We have to go through a certain time. Since we are now in the house of God and have also created something for God, we are there also in our fear of God in such a way that we say, much of the fear and of what comes against us, we place in God's hands.

The interview was conducted by Tobias Fricke.

In the Catholic Church, married couples have only had one chance to become saints together: If they died as martyrs. Now, for the first time, a married couple is to be canonized for living their marriage in an exemplary manner.

Marriage is, as Pope Francis once tweeted, "a royal road to becoming saints". But at least the official calendar of saints he can here hardly have had in mind: In the past 500 years, married couples have only been canonized together because they died as martyrs, not because they lived exemplary lives as spouses. Now, for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, a married couple is to be canonized who were not killed out of hatred for the faith: the French couple Louis (1823-1894) and Zelie Martin geb. Guerin (1831-1877).

On Saturday, Francis officially named the two as future saints at a meeting of cardinals, known as a consistory, at the Vatican and set the date for their canonization: the French couple is scheduled for 18. October in the context of the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on family and marriage to be canonized. Thus also the first holy family of the modern times develops.

Parents of St. Therese

For the Martins are the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897). Already during the last Synod of Bishops, relics of the couple were displayed in St. Peter's Basilica and in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

It is not that there have been no saintly couples and families at all so far. Known are for example the parents of the Mother of God Mary, St. Joachim and St. Anna. But both were venerated as saints even before the introduction of a central Roman canonization procedure in 1588. The same is true for most other holy couples. The few couples canonized in due process after 1588 were among larger groups of martyrs killed during the persecutions of Christians in Japan and Korea.

According to the Cologne clergyman and saint expert Helmut Moll, Louis and Zelie Martin can therefore be considered the first married couple to be canonized in this capacity. The Zelies became the second couple ever to be beatified in 2008, achieving a preliminary step toward canonization. Seven years earlier, the Italian couple Luigi (1880-1951) and Maria (1884-1965) Beltrame Quattrocchi, had already been beatified.

All daughters religious

The canonization process of the Martins, however, was accompanied by suspicion: They would be canonized only because they were the parents of a saint, a prominent one at that. Already in the context of the beatification ceremony, this conjecture was expressly rejected. The 19-year marriage produced nine children. All five daughters who reached adulthood became women religious.

Marriage and holiness: there are the early Christian martyrs, who often became saints precisely because they steadfastly refused to enter into a marriage covenant with a pagan. St. Agnes of Rome for example. Then there are those saints whose husbands, by their early death, cleared the way for a religious life. And there were probably the nameless bulk of those who were simply faithful, caring and fallible spouses without halos.

Francis: "Sacrifice and devotion"

Saints are the stars of the Catholic Church. For the first time, a married couple will now soon be officially recommended for veneration worldwide. This is considered a clear signal. Whoever asked where the "stars" of the church were, which they opposed to the stars of the world, who preached sexual permissiveness and self-realization, quickly brought his counterpart into explanatory trouble. John Paul II had already said that. (1978-2005) recognized. Benedict XVI. had to go all the way back to 6 in his message to World Family Day in Mexico City in 2009. The family's origins go back to the nineteenth century, to the senator Gordiano and his wife Silvia, the parents of Pope Gregory the Great, when he wanted to give examples to today's families.

And how is one now canonized as a married couple? It doesn't sound hard: Be ready to "sacrifice and surrender" every day, Francis tweeted.

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